Employee profile: Trevor Dzwonkowski

Residence: Merrill Position: Theater manager What you should know: Though Trevor Dzwonkowski holds the titles of co-owner and theater manager, moviegoers will often find him manning the concession stand. He covers a lot of ground in his work at the theater, including installing new equipment and preparing movies for showtime. The upgrade to digital equipment means he spends far less time setting up movies — with the old film reel-to-reel system, it took about 45 minutes to prepare everything. Now it takes less than five minutes. “It took a bit to work out some bugs, but the system is a lot easier than film and there are a lot fewer moving parts,” he said. In addition to operating the theater and working concessions, Dzwonkowski owns several rental properties. Balancing the two jobs is actually quite easy, Dzwonkowski said. Working at the theater is almost always a night shift, with the exceptions of matinees on weekends and during the summer. That schedule leaves plenty of time for him to take care of any issues with his rental properties or with the theater during the day.

MERRILL — From top-notch popcorn to comfortable seats and digital projectors, the Cosmo Theatre keeps improving to make movies in Merrill as enjoyable as possible.

The Cosmo, a three-screen cinema in downtown Merrill that plays first-run films, is in a nearly century-old building that was once home to a large stage theater, similar to The Grand theater in Wausau. After owner Dennis Lerch bought the building in the late ’90s, he converted the area into three spaces with the intent to continue making improvements.

The cinema soon will be in the midst of another update — seating in one of the theaters will replaced with stadium seating and high-backed chairs.

“Right from the time we bought the theater, we realized that updates needed to be made,” Lerch said. “This has been one of our long-term goals.”

Those updates have been immensely popular with filmgoers. Lerch said a lot of people who come in and immediately ask which movie is playing in the “good” theater, and the answer can sometimes sway their decision on which movie to see.

The theater will actually lose a number of seats because of the upgrades, but Lerch said the benefits of the stadium-style seating far outweigh any losses. The seats are more comfortable and allow for more legroom, and a steeper incline to the screen means less chance of someone’s head blocking the view.

Lerch and his son-in-law and theater manager Trevor Dzwonkowski, both of whom are carpenters by trade, will be installing the new seating themselves, just as they did when they first remodeled one of the other three theaters.

The duo now is in the midst of the busy movie season, which generally runs from October through December, so Lerch and Dzwonkowski plan to make the change in January, when the theater tends to be least busy. Lerch estimated that the conversion will take a week or two, though the timeline could vary depending on his schedule.

And last year, the theater installed digital equipment to replace its reel-to-reel system, a $200,000 upgrade. Dzwonkowski said the investment was necessary because film is likely on its way out as digital becomes cheaper and easier to mass produce.

About the only thing the owners have no plans to upgrade to is 3-D technology, Dzwonkowski said. They had the technology with the old film equipment, but they received more complaints than praise about the system, mostly about the annoyance of wearing glasses needed to see the films.

“It just didn’t make any sense for us to invest $20,000 in something that gets complaints,” he said.

Meanwhile, the theater tries to keep its prices low, even while investing in hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment upgrades.

“We do everything we can to keep our prices family-affordable,” Lerch said. “It’s getting tougher and tougher in this economy to find something for the whole family to do, so that’s important to us.”